Setup
sudo apt-get install subversion
Web-Dav apache module is contained in the libapache2-svn
sudo apt-get install libapache2-svn
To check if Web-Dav is enabled run the 2 following commands
sudo a2enmod dav sudo a2enmod dav_svn
Before creating repositories users and a group must be defined to have access to create or it will not work
so we add the group subversion and the user www-data which is what apache uses,
sudo mkdir /opt/svn-repos sudo addgroup --gid 3001 subversion sudo chown -R www-data:subversion svn-repos
Now our model we do not want Subversion users tied to the operating system. So we are going to rely on our catch all server admin id, serveradmin,
sudo usermod -a -G subversion serveradmin
Creating Repositories
First go to or create the directory you want to create the repositories in for this example we've created the svn-repos directory in /opt/,
The svnadmin command allows you to create svn repositories and allows you to perform several maintenance operations on the repositories.
Prior to Subversion 1.2, the default was to use Berkeley DB; the default is now FSFS. You can explicitly choose the filesystem type using the --fs-type argument, which accepts as a parameter either fsfs or bdb.
su - serveradmin svnadmin create --fs-type fsfs /opt/svn-data/hamsters
Setting Permissions on the Repository for WebDAV
After the repository is created, in order for the WebDAV process to work with the repository you need to change the permissions,
cd /opt/svn-data sudo chown -R www-data:subversion hamsters sudo chmod -R g+rws hamsters
Backup and Restore
Hi Roderick, the convention is to explain the action then issue the command. Below here it looks like you sometimes issue the command then explain. Please fix. Tin.
Checks the number of revisions in a repository
svnlook info hamsters
svnadmin dump /opt/svn-repos/hamsters > hamstersdumpfile
Dumps all revisions of the repository into a file in this case hamstersdumpfile
svnadmin dump hamsters -r # > hamsters.rev.#.dumpfile svnadmin dump hamsters -r 50:100 > hamsters.revs.50-100.dumpfile
Dumps a revision # that you decide. The other command dumps a range of revisions that you choose.
svnadmin load /opt/svn-repos/gerbils < hamstersdumpfile
Loads repository from dump file.
Setting Permissions on the Repository for WEBDAV
Similar to creating a repository permissions must also be set,
cd /opt/svn-data sudo chown -R www-data:subversion gerbils sudo chmod -R g+rws gerbils
Still to write is an entry on UUID when restoring from a shadow repository.
References
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.4/svn.intro.whatis.html
http://www.howtoforge.com/debian_subversion_websvn - Debian instructions more straight forward
http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CROWD/Integrating+Crowd+with+Subversion - Integrating with Crowd
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn-book.html#svn.reposadmin.maint.migrate - Indepth explanation on migrating repositories